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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 5, 2015)
Page 4 News Street Roots • dune 5-11,2015 A new approach to helping homeless youths heal BY EMILY GREEN S T A F F W R IT E R TL ike Sandell was out of his usual | % / | element He emerged from the A V JL backseat of a Champagne-gold Suburban, scanning the terrain. He was in the rolling hills of rural Canby, at a ranch where groves of cottonwood, alder and Douglas fir dot an expansive and well- manicured lawn. As he stood at the foot of Heron Hill, he spotted two Arabian thoroughbreds paddocked on the hillside and made his way toward them. As the 20-year-old trudged up the slope, he relied heavily on a walking cane to alleviate the torn meniscus in his right knee - an injury he says he sustained climbing carelessly onto a bunk bed in a homeless shelter. Three years earlier, when Sandell was 17, social workers removed him from his parents’ home near Los Angeles and placed him with his grandmother in Newberg. Six months later he found a rent-free place to live in Beaverton. It was his ticket out of the small town, which he says, “sucks.” The living situation didn’t last and the space he’d occupied at his grandmother’s had since been filled. He was able to find employment as a substitute educator, working with kids in special education programs, but it Wasn’t enough money to Magic and Dungeons and Dragons like other get him into housing. kids their age. According to U.S. Department of Housing The 2015 Point-In-Time count found on one night in January, in Multnomah County and Urban Development’s annual report to Congress in 2014, 60 percent of Oregon’s alone, there were 266 unaccompanied youth 1,096 unaccompanied homeless youth were ages 24 and younger and an additional 369 sleeping outside on a children living with single night in families who were January that year, but experiencing I t seems that egnine therapy Sandell wasn’t among homelessness. subtly snbw rts an im m ediate them. He had found a At p:ear, about 900 react!©» ©I distrust t©wards new home in homeless and something by nslag a w r y Portland’s crowded transitional youth homeless shelters. ■ large and noticeable example between the ages of It was at a shelter 15 and 24 come lik e a horse» Gaining a m ntnal in downtown Portland trust w ith something lik e that through its doors that Sandell noticed each year. can really be com forting/^ . stickers plastered all In December, p:ear ~~~ cody sukratt began to shuttle over the walls and bunk beds depicting youth from downtown p:ear’s logo. “What’s Portland to The p:ear?” he asked his Center at Heron Hill bunkmates. “It’s this great art space, you in Canby, a horse ranch where certified should come check it out,” someone replied. therapists use activities with horses to “The rest,” says Sandell, “is history.” - foster healing within clients through its P:ear, an acronym for project: education, Alliance Counseling program. art, recreation, is a nonprofit in downtown Equine therapy programs have been Portland providing homeless youth with rising in popularity for , decades. According opportunities to explore their creative sides, to Alliance Counseling and Center at Heron go on field trips in nature. It’s also a place Hill co-owner and director Joyce Korschgen, to feel normal again and to play games like there are at least 50 equine therapy providers in the area surrounding Portland. But she’s the first to offer a program specifically for homeless youth - a program she and Robinn Rudd, her partner in life and in business, are offering pro bono to homeless youth in Portland through p:ear. As Sandell approached the paddock, a fenced enclosure for: horses, a bay-colored beauty sauntered up to thè fence and nickered a greeting as he began to gently stroke her neck and snout. “I wish I knew your name,” Sandell said to her. Today was his first visit to the ranch. MerriBeth Vaughn, the certified equine specialist facilitating activities with P:ear, says while horse therapy can be extremely beneficial to any disenfranchised group - it doesn’t require a lot of talking - she’s ? noticed it’s especially effective with the kids from p:ear. I “They get around the horses and you can just feel the tension go out of everybody that’s in there,” she says. “They all seem like they just give a sigh of relief once they start petting the horses.” Brandon Houston discovered Center at Heron Hill when he visited the ranch for a class he was taking at Lewis & Clark Graduate School. At the time he’d been a volunteer mentor at p:ear for about one See STABLE, page 5
